"This prayer's for you" **Sermon for 7 Easter, 12 May 2024**

            Prayer is a powerful thing.  We have experienced that this past week.  Our prayers and our love have been surrounding Deacon Dorothy and Andy.  Jesus Himself sets the example of taking time to connect with God in prayer.  This morning, we have an extended prayer of Jesus’.

Scholars call this “The High Priestly” Prayer.  Here we see Jesus in His role as mediator and intercessor.  The great High Priest, as Hebrews phrases it (4:14-16).  Jesus is actively praying for His friends.  This prayer comes as part of Jesus’ teachings and prayers of Maundy Thursday. 

Can you imagine that?  Jesus is just hours away from betrayal, suffering, and death.  Yet, Jesus is not thinking of Himself at this time.  No.  Rather, Jesus is thinking about His followers.  Jesus is thinking about those who will be in deep distress and in great pain after His death.

In His great prayer, Jesus prays four things.  Jesus prays that His followers:

1)      May be one, just as Jesus is one with God;

2)      May have joy;

3)      May be victorious over the evil one;

4)      May fulfil their mission of representing Jesus to the world.

I think it is unfortunate that the lectionary does not include the rest of Jesus’ prayer.  Jesus’ prayer concludes:

I’m praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you’ve sent me and loved them
In the same way you’ve loved me.

Father, I want those you gave me
To be with me, right where I am,
So they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me,
Having loved me
Long before there ever was a world.
Righteous Father, the world has never known you,
But I have known you, and these disciples know
That you sent me on this mission.
I have made your very being known to them—
Who you are and what you do—
And continue to make it known,
So that your love for me
Might be in them
Exactly as I am in them.

(John  17:20-26; MSG)

 

“Those who will believe in me . . .” (verse 20).  That is us gathered here this morning.  Jesus is praying for you and for me.  How powerful, how comforting is that thought.  Long before you or I were even born, Jesus was thinking about us and interceding on our behalf.

Note that Jesus does not ask for His followers to be taken out of this world.  Nor does Jesus pray that we’d be sheltered from the evil of this world.  No.  Instead, Jesus asks that God would use us in this world.  That, through times of pain and suffering, through challenges and difficulties, the love of God would still shine in and through us.  That we’d be salt and light in a broken and hurting world (Matthew 5:13-16).

           Jesus here connects our ministry with His own.  We, too, are to heal, to forgive, to set free.  Jesus says in the prayer, “In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.  I’m consecrating myself for their sakes  So they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission” (vs. 18-19; MSG)

God first sent Jesus to reveal God’s love.  Jesus now sends us to continue His ministry.  Consecrated means to be made holy, to be set apart.”  Just as we consecrate, or set apart, bread and wine at the Holy Eucharist.  You and I are set apart (and sent out) to reflect God’s love to the world.